This Southern State Is The Prison Capital Of The World

Louisiana is the prison capital of the world, argues Cindy Chang
of the Times-Picayune.

The state imprisons 1,619 people per 100,000 —
more than any nation in the world including the U.S. (730),
Russia (525), Iran (333) and China (122).

The impetus for Louisiana's imprisonment efficiency is the
state's million private-prison industry, which houses the
majority of the state's inmates and depends on a steady flow of
inmates to maintain profits.

Those profits, in turn, are used to finance the budgets of
Louisiana law enforcement in the form of new squad
cars, guns and laptops.

Meanwhile, taxpayers spend about $663 million a
year to provide food, housing, security and medical care for the
state's 40,000 inmates — including $24 million a year caring for
between 300 and 400 infirm inmates — with $182 million of it
going to for-profit prisons run by sheriffs or private companies.

The only reason the cost isn't higher is that Louisiana only
spends about $38.50 per day on each inmate – the
lowest of any U.S. state.

"You have people who are so invested in maintaining the
present system — not just the sheriffs, but judges, prosecutors,
other people who have links to it," said Burk Foster, a former
professor at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette and an expert
on Louisiana prisons. "They don't want to see the prison system
get smaller or the number of people in custody reduced, even
though the crime rate is down, because the good old
boys are all linked together in the punishment network,
which is good for them financially and politically."

Louisiana's system serves as a microcosm of America's
prison-industrial complex: the state has harsher sentencing
than any other state, but has one of the highest rates of both
violent and property crimes; the prison population has doubled
over the last two decades, but New Orleans continues to lead the
nation in homicides; the state has "a much lower percentage of
people incarcerated for violent offenses" when compared to
the national average, but "a much higher percentage behind
bars for drug offenses," according to Chang.